Tsotsi

Twice in Gavin Hood's Oscar-winning Tsotsi, we see a train pull into a station. What seems like a straightforward moment--in fact, it's the oldest shot in cinema--turns threatening when we realize that the camera is hovering above the tracks, in the way of the train, ready to be smashed. Ever so slowly, the camera glides out of the way; the train just barely misses it, and by extension, us. The moment stuck with me because it perfectly encapsulates the South African movie's simmering sense of menace. Tsotsi is a movie about survival, but the train is there to let you know that you can only dodge it for so long. Sooner or later, it's gonna hit you.

Stepping off that train are Tsotsi and his gang: his nickname translates as "thug," and it is well deserved. When we meet him, he's stabbing people for money and starts fights with homeless men in wheelchairs. Portrayed by Presley Chweneyagae as a cypher full of a rage, Tsotsi is a seething live wire who believes in nothing and will beat his own friends to a bloody pulp at the slightest provocation.

But Tsotsi's hand-to-mouth shantytown life changes after he shoots a woman in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb and steals her car--as well as her baby, which happened to be in the back seat. At first, Tsotsi simply deposits the child in a paper bag under his bed, but eventually he tries to feed it, changes diapers, and procures baby food at gunpoint. While his gang is tempted to work for the local goon and the child's parents and the police search frantically, the baby in Tsotsi's care slowly rekindles his capacity for empathy. As Tsotsi struggles, Chweneyagae's performance grows richly complicated, teetering between Tsotsi's ruthless thug exterior and the wounded young man who is hiding behind it. It is thrilling to watch his slow transformation, a melting into kindness that is its own reward, no matter where it leads.

Based on the novel by Athol Fugard, Tsotsi tells a life-affirming story, but Gavin Hood's punchy direction avoids sentimentality. There's a healthy dose of Fernando Meirelles' third world cool in the hip-hop inflected shots of the shantytown, but being a gangster here isn't nearly as much fun as in City of God. The world of Tsotsi is cruel and unforgiving, and Hood doesn't allow himself any ironic detachment to soften the blows. In one scene, Tsotsi revisits his childhood home, which turns out to be a stack of abandoned cement pipes at the outskirts of the township where homeless kids spend their nights. Even brief moments of respite are fraught with sadness.